


A Split, A Splice

by virdant



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Post-Break Up, Red String of Fate, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-22 17:48:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15587334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virdant/pseuds/virdant
Summary: Blaine frowned at the frayed ends of the thread around his wrist. Everybody was born with a metaphysical thread that coalesced as they grew up. When you followed the thread—when a matchmaker followed the thread—then on the other side was your soulmate. Fairytales told of people who followed their threads to their soulmate, but that was impossible in this era. Instead, you went to a matchmaker, who found your match and tied them to you.Blaine's bond with Kurt snaps when Kurt breaks up with him. When he goes to a matchmaker to try to fix things, he runs into Sebastian, coerced into seeing a matchmaker himself.





	A Split, A Splice

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Seblaine Week 2018 - Day 2: Soulmarks. This is not a soulmarks AU, because I misread the prompt as soulmates and wrote this and realized far too late that I had gotten the prompt wrong, but it shall have to suffice.

* * *

“Blaine Anderson,” Sebastian’s familiar voice drawled. “What on Earth are you doing here?”

“I could ask the same of you,” Blaine replied, not looking up from his phone where he was catching up on the latest show choir news. “Sebastian Smythe at a matchmaker. Who would have thought.”

“Mom’s gotten ideas about settling down,” he announced, flinging himself into the plastic bucket seat next to Blaine. “She’s insisted I go to a matchmaker.”

“Did she insist that you share your rock salt exploits to the person who’s going to decide your future?”

“Ow.” He pressed a hand to his heart. “I apologized for that.”

“Yeah.” He finally looked up from his phone. “I know.”

He frowned back. “But seriously, Anderson. What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be doing whatever it is bondmates do with Gayface?”

Blaine shrugged, throat locking around the words. “Guess not.”

Sebastian studied him silently, before stretching out in his seat. “Alright,” he concluded. “Something happen with Hummel?”

“Why would you think that?” He stared down at his phone.

“You didn’t tell me to stop calling him Gayface.”

Blaine looked up, again. Sebastian was staring at the ceiling, to all appearances completely nonchalant. “Not because I’m at a matchmaker?”

“That too,” he conceded.

Blaine stared at the thread around his wrist, the end ragged. “Yeah.” He shrugged. “I guess.”

Sebastian glanced over at him. “I only promised my mom that I’d go to the matchmaker. I didn’t say anything about talking to the matchmaker.”

Blaine looked over.

Sebastian sighed, hauling himself to his feet. “Coffee?”

Blaine eloquently said, “Huh?”

“Coffee.” He cocked his head. “Let’s get out of here.”

He touched the frayed tip of the string. “I shouldn’t.” 

Sebastian, framed by the afternoon sun, said, “So?” and Blaine took the offered hand.

* * *

If Blaine squinted, he could almost see the thread tied around his wrist. One end faded into the skin of his inner arm, a seamless join; but the other end—

The cut was particularly ragged, as if it had been gnawed short instead of the traditional cut. But then again, nothing about his relationship with Kurt had been traditional.

What would have been traditional was going to a matchmaker when Blaine was in New York with Kurt. The matchmaker would have had the traditional knives, the ones that could cut the threads with little to no pain. They would have cut the thread that bound Blaine and Kurt and found new soulmates for them. A professional soulmate matchmaker could connect cut threads so smoothly that nobody else could see the join.

But that was only if it had been cut properly.

He would always have this marring the thread of his soul, now. Even if he went to a matchmaker to reconnect this thread, it would never be as seamless and smooth as that first connection—not with Kurt’s rejection ripping at it until it finally snapped, right where it was fraying.

He coiled it around his wrist, and the edges tickled the soft skin of his palm. Eventually, the pain would fade.

That’s what they said.

* * *

“You aren’t going to ask what I was doing there?”

Sebastian shrugged. His legs were kicked out, blocking the narrow paths around the other tables at the Lima Bean. A girl scowled at him as she squeezed past. Sebastian ignored her. “Soulmates are overrated.”

“You were at the matchmaker too.”

“Yeah, Mom has weird ideas about going to a matchmaker before you’re 18. Dad doesn’t care.”

Blaine frowned at the frayed ends of the thread around his wrist. Everybody was born with a metaphysical thread that coalesced as they grew up. When you followed the thread—when a matchmaker followed the thread—then on the other side was your soulmate. Fairytales told of people who followed their threads to their soulmate, but that was impossible in this era. Instead, you went to a matchmaker, who found your match and tied them to you.

A matchmaker, who could cut the bonds cleanly and set you free.

“Seems like a bit of a change from the guy who found the love of his life on the Scandals dance floor.”

Sebastian snorted. “I didn’t choose to go to a matchmaker.”

“Don’t you want to know?” Blaine touched his wrist, where the thread disappeared into his skin. “Don’t you want to know who you’re destined to spend the rest of your life with?”

Sebastian leaned forward. “Not if it isn’t you.”

* * *

He didn’t go back to the matchmaker that weekend. He didn’t do much of anything; he laid in bed and stared at his phone waiting for a phone call that never came, waiting for texts that never came in, waiting for notifications on Facebook that never showed up. He wandered downstairs in the afternoon to scrounge a lunch from leftovers, his hair a tousled mess, and returned to his room to stare at his homework and pretend that he cared when all he wanted to do was go back to bed and wait.

On Sunday night, his phone buzzed. He jerked upright, fumbling for it.

Sebastian said: _turns out my mother’s not into interpreting the word of the letter rather than the spirit of the message._

Blaine stared at the words for a long time, his thumbs pressed against the sides of his phone as he slumped, slowly, shifting deeper into bed even as the screen faded back to blank darkness and his phone grew heavy in his hands. He tapped the screen, the familiar lock screen of him and Kurt materializing.

They had been happy.

The thread seemed like a manacle, digging into the tender flesh along the inside of his wrist, even though Blaine knew that there was no way that he could feel it.

One firm press of the thumb at a time, he typed back a reply.

_Did you go back to the matchmaker?_

Instantly, his phone vibrated in his hand.

 _Next weekend._  
_Won’t be nearly as attractive a prospect without your ass there._

He stared at the message for a bit.

_You’ll have to manage._

_Don’t be like that, Killer._

_Why do you call me that?_

This time, there was pause, long enough for the phone to fall out of Blaine’s palm and onto the duvet. He stared up at the ceiling, tracing patterns in the orange-peel textured plaster. 

_You kill it every time you sing._

He stared down at the phone and left it on the duvet as he closed his eyes.

* * *

They had tied their bonds in the Dalton Academy senior commons: Kurt latching onto Blaine the minute he heard Blaine sing, Blaine double-knotting their bond when he heard Kurt sing. The thread that connected them was filled with the sound of song, and when it had been pulled taut between them, Blaine had thought of plucking it, like plucking a string, and seeing what melody formed.

Blaine sat in the McKinley choir room and didn’t say anything.

Kurt hadn’t responded to any of his messages.

* * *

“Wow.”

Blaine looked up from his still silent phone. He had another message composed, his thumb hovering over the backspace. He had been debating sending it to Kurt or consigning it to drafts or just deleting it and letting everything simmer in despair.

Sebastian looked infuriatingly casual in his green polo and jeans. It reminded Blaine of Scandals with Kurt, and—

“Here for me?” Sebastian pressed a hand against his heart in what could have been dramatic effect or could have been sarcasm. Sometimes it was hard to tell with Sebastian.

“Ha,” Blaine managed.

Sebastian sprawled next to him, so close that Blaine could imagine the frayed end of his bond with Kurt tickling Sebastian’s arm. “How long have you been waiting?”

Blaine shrugged.

“Long enough for me to convince you that we should skip out and get coffee?”

He shrugged again.

Sebastian frowned at him. “Is this Hummel’s doing?”

“What?” Blaine shook his head. “What does Kurt have to do with anything?”

“This silent treatment,” he clarified. “What did Hummel say now about me?”

“He didn’t say anything.” The words came out surprisingly bitter.

Sebastian stared at him, and then he turned to stare at the TV in the corner of the waiting room. It was playing a romantic comedy, about a boy going through girl after girl as he and the matchmaker parsed through the fibres attached to his soul, so tightly wound around each other it looked like a skein of yarn. Each disastrous date led to another filament snapped. It was gearing up for a grand finale, where the matchmaker sending him on each date turned out to be his soulmate.

Sebastian scoffed, “God, I hope that’s not me.”

Blaine glanced at him.

He jerked his chin at the TV. 

“I thought you’d be glad for a chance to date around.”

He made a face. “Making out in Scandals is one thing. But soulmate shopping? I’ll pass.” He sighed. “If I’m going to have to go through this, I’d rather it be as painless as possible.”

Blaine looked down at the ragged end of the thread. “Yeah.”

“Enough about my misery. It’s only fun when other people are suffering. So, why are you here? Trouble in paradise?”

Blaine stared at the TV. “Yeah,” he said as the protagonist wound the last filament attached to his pinky around his hand, following it back to the matchmaker. The background blurred as he ran, reeling in handfuls of the rope. “You’ll be happy about this. Kurt broke up with me.”

* * *

The matchmaker, a brunette in her 40’s who had introduced herself as “Call me Auntie Hope,” studied the frayed thread. She turned Blaine’s wrist this way and that, studying the point where it wrapped around his wrist, and then she tugged a little at the loose end as if to confirm that it had snapped.

“Well, Honey, I don’t know,” she said. “When did this happen?”

“Two weeks ago,” he mumbled.

She made an alarming tsking noise. “Who made this cut, Dear?”

“Nobody.”

“Nobody?”

“Nobody.” Blaine stared at it. “It snapped when Kurt broke up with me.”

She hummed. “Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

She tugged on the thread, gently. “Does that hurt, honey?”

He shook his head.

“Hmm.” 

Blaine swallowed. “Can you fix it?”

“Oh, Honey,” she sighed. “Not without the other end.”

* * *

Sebastian stood as Blaine emerged, “Scandals doesn’t open until later, so it’ll have to be coffee.”

Blaine blinked, dumbly. “I thought your mom said you had to find your soulmate.”

“I’m sure she’ll understand,” he said, crowding Blaine out of the matchmaker’s. “Consider it your good deed for the day.”

“My good deed?”

“Keeping me out of the clutches of fate-ordained monogamy.”

“I don’t know if your mother is going to go for that.”

“You don’t know her,” Sebastian assured. He paused at the parking lot. “I’ll drop you off back here for your car.”

“I can drive myself.”

“And deprive me of your presence for the duration of the drive? Here I thought you were doing a good deed for the day.”

He couldn’t help the laugh. “Only you, Sebastian.”

Sebastian smirked back. 

“Where are we going?” he asked, slipping into the passenger seat. 

“Coffee,” Sebastian said. “And not at the Lima Bean. They might have a better roast than the Dalton cafeteria, but there’s no need to subject ourselves to that on a weekend.”

Blaine settled into the car. “And where are you suggesting?”

He grinned, and it made him look his age, for once. “You’ll see.”

* * *

“A tour of all of the coffee shops in Columbus,” Blaine echoed. “Do you want us to die from a caffeine overdose?”

“Well, you’ll just have to meet me tomorrow to continue it.”

“If this is how you pick up guys, I understand why you restrict yourself to one-night-stands.”

“I resent that insinuation. Do I look like somebody who’ll restrict myself?”

“Oh, no.” Blaine shook his head over his coffee—a nutty dark roast that paired well with the dash of cinnamon he’d sprinkled in. “I would never call into question your hedonist tendencies.”

Sebastian, non-alcoholic coffee in hand, grinned back. He took a long drag, before saying, “Okay, I’m going to say it once and never again.”

Blaine blinked.

“You can do better than Hummel.”

Blaine stared down, the mouthful of coffee suddenly ashes in his mouth. “That’s not.”

Sebastian shrugged and slouched in his seat. 

“He.” He swallowed. “You have the wrong idea. I cheated on him.”

Sebastian shrugged. “Alright.”

“He had every right to break up with me.” He touched the thread. “I just didn’t think the thread would snap.”

“It snapped?”

“You know, when the bond formed, I thought it meant forever.” 

“Wait.” Sebastian leaned forward. “What do you mean it snapped?”

Blaine’s mouth twisted on its own accord. “I mean. Kurt said that it’s over, and then it snapped and we weren’t bound anymore. What else would I mean?”

* * *

Everything at McKinley reminded him of Kurt: here was where Kurt used to sit during Glee; here was his locker last year, where he and Kurt had made a dozen plans; here was Kurt’s locker last year, where he and Kurt had made a dozen more plans.

He auditioned for West Side Story and thought of Kurt.

His part in the school musical was small enough that he didn’t have to show up to every single rehearsal, just the ones that called for Teen Angel. It was both a blessing and a curse: rehearsal gave him focus and took his mind off of Kurt; rehearsal reminded him of rehearsing with Kurt last year. 

Tina fitted him for his costume, and Blaine thought of Kurt.

He tried to focus on his classes. He tried to focus on his college applications. He tried to get in contact with Kurt.

Sebastian texted him, once. 

_Let me know when you want to go to Scandals._

He stared at the text for a very long time. He didn’t accept the invitation, but he didn’t reject it either. Instead, he let it sit on his phone, opening up the thread with Sebastian every now and then just to read through it. It was classic Sebastian, cocky yet charming at the same time.

A week before opening weekend, after yet another disastrous rehearsal that ended in an entire litany of passive aggressive comments from Kitty, Blaine opened up the chat (Kurt still hadn’t responded to any of his texts) and typed.

_Tonight._

* * *

The last time he’d gone to Scandals was when he was with Kurt. He had gotten drunk and danced with Sebastian. He’d tried to kiss Kurt and Kurt had pulled away. 

The bond had pulled tight, thinning in the middle as if about to snap.

He’d pulled Kurt into the backseat of the car and—

He drove himself, parking in what might have been the same spot as Kurt had parked last time. Last time, Sebastian had waited for them inside, drink in hand. This time, Sebastian was leaning against his car, fiddling with his phone.

“Wasn’t sure if you were actually going to show, Killer.”

“I said tonight,” Blaine retorted.

He smirked. “Yeah. Guess you did.”

Blaine jerked his chin. “Are we going in?”

“Sure.” He didn’t move. “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” Blaine scoffed. “What isn’t wrong?”

He studied Blaine. “Do you still have the ID I gave you?”

“Yeah.”

“Then why did you ask me to come with you?” He shrugged. “Not that I’m against going to a gay bar with you.”

Blaine swallowed. 

Sebastian said, in unusual solemnity, “Getting drunk isn’t going to make you happy.”

“I want to forget,” he said.

“You want to _regret_ ,” Sebastian corrected. “I’m not going to support you in your self-flagellation.”

“You’re the one who texted me!”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m glad I did. It means I can keep you from fucking up this part.”

* * *

The waiting room for Hope Matchmaking Service was growing more and more familiar. These were the plastic bucket seats every color of the rainbow. That was the shelf of magazines, an unfair percentage of them wedding magazines. There was the television, playing a new movie—it had started out as an interesting soulmate drama set in a music university, but time travel seemed to have popped up suddenly, and Blaine found himself unconsciously riveted.

“That’s an awful movie.”

Blaine sighed. “What are you doing here?”

Sebastian slouched in his usual chair. “Do you really need the whole spiel again?”

“You could just go into Auntie Hope’s office and find out who your soulmate is and never come back here again.”

“And miss the chance to see you on a Saturday?”

“Yeah, we can’t have that, can we?”

Sebastian grinned back—more delight than a smirk, but something restrained still in the execution. “That’s better.”

“What?”

He leaned back. “That sarcasm. It’s better than moping or whatever you were doing.”

Blaine sighed. “You wouldn’t understand. Kurt—”

“Yeah,” Sebastian interrupted. “I don’t understand what you see in Kurt. But I know that no matter what you did or he did, hanging onto broken threads and what-ifs is just living in the past.” He leaned forward. “Who do you need to forgive you, for you to forgive yourself?”

* * *

Auntie Hope took one look at him and shook her head.

Blaine swallowed.

“I can’t, Honey,” she said, taking his hand in both of hers. The cut end of the string around his wrist dangled without another person on the other end. “I told you. Not unless I have the both of you in my room.”

“You have to,” Blaine protested. “Please. He’s the love of my life.”

She smiled sympathetically—almost cajolingly. “I’m sorry.”

“Please.” His voice shook. “I made a mistake. I was lonely. I thought he was leaving me.”

“Was he?” she asked.

“No. Yes. I don’t know.” Blaine shook his head. His vision blurred. “But I love him, so much. He’s the only one I love. He’s the only one I’ll ever love. I have to get him back. I—”

She squeezed his hand gently. “I know, dear.”

“I—”

“I know.” Her thumb brushed against the back of his hand, and he shook at the tenderness in that motion. “You love him. And sometimes that’s enough. But sometimes it’s not.”

His breath hitched.

“Love is a beautiful thing. But love isn’t what makes a bond between souls.”

* * *

Tina adjusted Blaine’s costume, uncharacteristically silent despite the mouthful of pins in her mouth. Finally, after the fitting was finished and his Teen Angel outfit stashed safely away for alterations, she asked, “You okay?”

“What?” Blaine blinked.

“You’ve been really quiet. I mean, I know that you and Kurt broke up.”

“Who told you that?”

Tina said, “It’s on Facebook.”

Blaine swallowed. “Oh.”

“But you guys are soulmates,” Tina said, encouragingly, picking at the seams of Marley’s costume. “So even if you’re apart now, you’re still destined to be together. Not like me and Mike.”

“Tina,” Blaine began.

“I’m not bitter!” she laughed, bitterly. “I mean, okay, I am, a little. I really thought that maybe Mike and I could have done it, you know? Beaten the odds. Become soulmates after dating a bit without having to go to a matchmaker.” She yanked, and the thread snapped in two.

Blaine said, “Oh, Tina…”

“But you don’t have to worry about that! ‘Cause you and Kurt—”

“We aren’t soulmates anymore.”

Tina froze. “What?”

Blaine smiled bitterly. “Our bond snapped.” He held up the wrist, even though Tina couldn’t see the string around his wrist. “It was fraying, every minute that Kurt missed one of our Skype dates or forgot to respond to my texts, and I thought it meant that he didn’t love me. But I was wrong, and I… I cheated on him.”

“And the bond broke?”

Blaine said, “No.” He closed his eyes. “I regretted it. I went to confess to Kurt and ask his forgiveness. Kurt—he was so hurt. That was when the bond snapped.”

“When Kurt found out you cheated?”

“Yeah,” Blaine said, the night suddenly vivid in his memory. It’s over, Kurt had declared, and it was, because Blaine had watched the bond snap the moment he confessed his mistake.

“I didn’t realize,” Tina whispered in abject horror. “God. I’m sorry, Blaine. Here I was trying to help and I just—”

“It’s okay,” Blaine interrupted. “It’s okay, Tina.” He took a deep breath. “I’m working on it.”

* * *

Sebastian found him in Auntie Hope’s waiting room, watching this Saturday’s movie, a drama about missed connections and romance budding on a train.

“Get up.”

“Leave me alone, Sebastian.”

“Are you going to sit here every Saturday?” Sebastian scoffed. “What do you think is going to happen?”

“If you don’t have any intention of finding your soulmate,” Blaine retorted, “Why don’t you just stop coming here?”

He snorted. “And deprive myself of my weekly ogle of your ass?”

“God, Sebastian!” He threw up his hands. “What is your problem?”

“Maybe it’s you.” He drew himself straight, all six feet and more of him. “Do you really think that this time it’ll be different?”

“There has to be something I can do!” Blaine shouted. “He’s my soulmate!”

“He was,” Sebastian spat. 

“I’m not going to let my mistake ruin what I had with him.”

“Alright.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Tell me how that goes for you.”

* * *

From the stage, his eyes met Kurt’s, and he froze, just a second, before the show continued, and Blaine with it.

In the hallway of McKinley, where Blaine and Kurt had shared so many conversations before, Blaine found Kurt.

Blaine said: “Kurt, I need to talk to you.”

Kurt said: “I’m not interested.”

Blaine protested: “I—I never told you about what happened. The guy I hooked up with—I need you to know everything.”

Kurt scoffed: “What are you going to tell me? That it wasn’t serious? That you only made out? That you didn’t care about him?”

Blaine said, quietly: “I didn’t care.”

Like a knife, Kurt’s words cut. “Do you think any of that matters to me? Relationships are about trust, and I don’t trust you anymore.”

In the hallway of McKinley, Kurt left, and Blaine was left behind, a bond still broken.

* * *

The next Saturday, Sebastian was waiting in Blaine’s house. “Your mom let me in,” he said, looking up from where he was taking notes at the kitchen table. “She’s nice.”

“What are you doing here?”

He shrugged. “I figured I’d stop you here instead of making the trek to that matchmaker for our weekly chat.”

“It’s not a weekly chat.”

“It is for me.” He closed his notebook. “And now that I’ve gotten to you before you can watch most of an awful soulmate movie, maybe we can have a talk about why you’re so hung up on getting back together with a boy who won’t give you the time of day.”

“Like you?”

“Ouch.” He didn’t look surprised. “Low blow.”

“Listen, Sebastian.” He took a deep breath. “Kurt is my soulmate.”

“Was.”

“The fact that we bonded means something, okay?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Alright,” he drawled. “Sure.”

“I don’t want to settle.” Blaine snapped. “Maybe you’re alright with dicking around, but I wanted love. I want love and hope and my soulmate. I can handle everything the world can throw at me, as long as I’m with my soulmate. I’m not going to settle for anybody.”

“Yeah,” Sebastian said, and he was uncharacteristically serious. “So why did you settle for Hummel? Because you tied strings around your wrist and said it was so?”

Blaine flinched.

“Your bond was so flimsy it snapped when he learned you made a mistake. The minute you weren’t an infallible hero, he didn’t want you. But because you were bonded, you think that you should stay with him. You don’t call that settling?”

“It wasn’t—”

He scoffed. “You think that a bond means you’re fated for each other, but any matchmaker worth their salt can take two threads and tie them together. I bet Auntie Hope’s got a whole box of fids and wax to make the join seem seamless. Bet she ties together a dozen barely-fated people every day.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Blaine said.

“Let me guess. You two confessed your love in the Dalton senior commons, through song, and your bond magically sprang into being, because it’s that special and precious. The first bond in your life, and it’s going to last forever.”

“If I didn’t cheat—”

Sebastian shouted, “Then why did you!” 

It was very quiet. Sebastian’s chest heaved, and Blaine couldn’t help but fixate on the regularly implacable Sebastian overrun with emotion.

More quietly, Sebastian said, “I know you, Blaine. What was it? Loneliness? The need for companionship? Fear of the unknown? Seeing the fibres of your bond snap one by one and not knowing what to do about it?”

His mouth opened, and then closed.

“Your bond didn’t break because you cheated. Your bond broke because Kurt wasn’t what you needed.”

“And _you’re_ what I need?”

Sebastian said, “That’s not my choice. That’s yours.” He grabbed his things. “But for the record, I don’t think it’s settling to move on. I think it’s settling if you stay with somebody just because your sixteen-year-old self formed a bond with them.”

* * *

Sebastian called, and Blaine let it ring to voice mail.

He called again, and again. He sent a few texts. Blaine left all of the messages unread.

Kurt still didn’t reply to any of his messages.

He found himself at Hope Matchmaking Service, sitting in the same spot he always did. The television was playing a movie about a girl whose soulmate died. He had left her a dozen letters, and as she read each of them and followed their instructions the shorn ends of their bond slowly faded until around her finger was a thread that stretched into the empty expanse of the future.

Blaine watched the credits roll.

“Blaine, Honey?” 

He looked up. 

Auntie Hope was studying him. “Are you alright, Dear?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. He looked at his wrist, the thread a lurid red, the edges frayed and scraggly. “Do you see a lot of broken bonds here?”

“Oh, Honey.” She shook her head sympathetically. “Of course.”

“Do you find them new soulmates?”

“Sometimes.”

He looked down. “Even when they have bonds like mine?”

She took his hand and the bond. “Do you know why bonds are made of rope?”

He shook his head.

“Every thread means something,” she said. “You aren’t joined by a single thread. You’re joined by a rope of threads, and each one of these threads represents something new. Shared joy. Shared sorrows. Similar interests. Physical attraction.”

“Love,” Blaine said.

“And the sum of that can be called love,” she agreed. “You have experienced a wonderful thing, Honey.” She dropped the end of the rope into his hand. “You’ve loved and were loved in return. And the best part?” She stood. “You can experience that again.”

* * *

_Hey._

_Thought you weren’t talking to me._

Blaine swallowed.

_I’m not. Not not talking. I mean I am talking._

_Glad your singing’s better than your texting, hot stuff._

_Don’t call me that._

_Alright. Blaine. What’s up._

He stared down at his phone for a long time, long enough for the screen to dim and then turn off. He flung his head back, staring at the orange-peel textured ceiling again.

_Want to watch the new Star Trek movie in Columbus this weekend?_

It sat on read for a while. Long enough for Sebastian to check his schedule. Long enough for Sebastian to come up with a dozen excuses.

His phone vibrated violently, and he dropped it before fumbling it to his ear.

“Hello?”

“Is this a date?”

“I thought you didn’t believe in dating,” he said through a dry throat.

Sebastian scoffed. “I don’t believe in soulmate shopping. There’s a difference.”

His hand clenched. “What’s the difference.”

It was quiet, just the soft sound of Sebastian breathing as he took his time. “I’m not going to stay with somebody because I tied my soul to them. I’m going to tie my soul to them because I’m staying with them.”

Blaine swallowed. “So if this was a date?”

He could hear Sebastian’s smirk. “I’d give Blaine Anderson a whirl.”

“Is that a yes?”

“You have to test-drive the car before you buy, you know.”

“Did you just call me a car?”

“Of course not. Cars don’t have nearly as great an ass as you.”

“And I thought you didn’t believe in shopping.”

“Soulmate shopping,” Sebastian corrected. “But this isn’t soulmate shopping.”

“Okay,” Blaine said. “I’ll bite.”

“Soulmate shopping,” he said, “is when you’re just dicking around, seeing which luckless fool your soul decides to bond with. But you?” Sebastian laughed. “You’re the boy I think I might stay with.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Mika who very helpfully assisted me with thread/rope knowledge, and Ellie for alpha reading.
> 
> I didn't write my original plan, which was a wacky hijinks soulmate AU, so I instead summarized said original plan into one of the movie plots. 
> 
> comments and kudos always appreciated!
> 
> enjoyed this? [reblog on tumblr](https://virdant.tumblr.com/post/176710949476/fic-glee) | [retweet on twitter](https://twitter.com/virdant/status/1026595674261864448)  
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